Crucial Exams

CompTIA Linux+ XK0-006 (V8) Practice Question

During an investigation of an unexpected load spike on a Linux file-server you run the command:

ps -eo pid,state,wchan,comm | head

and notice several entries such as:

 9874 D  wait_on_page_bit  rsync

You issue kill -9 9874, but ten minutes later the same process is still listed in ps and the load average has not dropped. Considering the process state shown by ps, which statement best explains why the process cannot be terminated immediately?

  • It is in interruptible sleep waiting for user input and is deliberately ignoring SIGKILL until the input arrives.

  • It has already finished execution and is a zombie; kill has no target to terminate, so nothing changes.

  • It was stopped with SIGSTOP and must be resumed with fg or SIGCONT before it can be killed.

  • It is blocked in uninterruptible sleep waiting for an I/O operation to finish, so it will not process any signal-including SIGKILL-until the wait ends.

CompTIA Linux+ XK0-006 (V8)
Services and User Management
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